System and method for portal page layout

Abstract

A system and method for describing a portal page, comprising, defining a placeholder on a template, associating at least one portlet with the placeholder, and wherein the template can be customized for least one of a group and a user.

Description

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present invention disclosure relates to website portal design, and in particular, portal page layouts.

BACKGROUND

A portal is a point of access to data and applications that provides a unified and potentially personalized view of information and resources. Typically, a portal is implemented as one or more pages on a website. Portal pages can integrate many elements, such as live data feeds, static information and multimedia presentations. For example, a portal page could combine news headlines and a stock quote ticker that change over time with inert information such as maps, images and text. When a portal page is designed, software that drives these various elements must be programmed such that the desired page is rendered. This presents a obstacle to average users who wish to design and customize such pages unencumbered by implementation details. What is needed is a flexible, accessible way to create and maintain portal pages.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is an illustration of an exemplary portal page in accordance to one embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2 is diagram of portal page customization in accordance to one embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a system in accordance to one embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The invention is illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements. It should be noted that references to “an” or “one” embodiment in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean at least one.

FIG. 1 is an illustration of an exemplary portal page in accordance to one embodiment of the invention. In one embodiment, by way of example, portal page 16 is rendered upon display area 12, which can be a region in the display area of a device for displaying images and/or producing sounds (e.g., a computer monitor). Portal page 16 is comprised of several elements. Portal page selection tabs 20-28 can each be selected by a user to render a different page within the portal. Portal pages can be thought of as panels or panes that can be swapped into and out of a display region of the available portal real estate. By way of a non limiting example, selection of a portal element can be accomplished with an input device such as a mouse, a motion detector, voice commands, hand or eye gestures, etc. If tab 20 were selected, for example, the portal page corresponding to that tab would be rendered. Although the tabs 20-28 in FIG. 1 are displayed horizontally, in another embodiment the tabs could be displayed vertically or using some other scheme. In yet another embodiment, the tabs 20-28 could be rendered as buttons or as other kinds of interactive controls.

Within portal page 16 is display area 10, which includes portlets and other elements. A portlet is an application that manages its own graphical user interface (GUI). Portlets can communicate with each other and with other software and hardware components (e.g., Enterprise Java Beans™, Java™ Beans, servlets, applets, etc.). The Java™ programming language, its libraries, environment, and toolkits are available from Sun Microsystems, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. The other software and hardware components may be part of the same execution environment as the portlet or may be in a different execution environment. In one embodiment, a portlet is implemented as a JavaServer Page™. Portlet GUI 30 displays real-time stock ticker information. A user could configure such a portlet to display certain stocks, for example. In another embodiment, the user can select a given stock displayed in portlet GUI 30 and receive more detailed information, such as the price history, price to earnings ratio, etc. Portlet 30 would be responsible for handling user input and responding accordingly. Portlet GUI 32 displays up-to-date information pertaining to a user's checking accounts. Likewise, portlet GUI 32 could provide detailed information on transactions if the user were to select an account. Advertisement portlet GUI 18 displays an advertisement that could be directed specifically to the current user based on demographics or other information. For instance, if a user had an outstanding home loan in good standing, the advertisement could be for a home equity loan. Likewise, if the user had an appropriate amount in a savings account, the advertisement could be for a new car loan. Static area 14 contains text or an image with text.

In one embodiment, a display area such as 10 can be described with a template. Templates can specify the location of elements on a portal page. A template can include one or more placeholders which define regions of the template wherein a portlet can display itself, or wherein other static or dynamic content can be rendered. A given placeholder can host more than one portlet. In such a case, the template area occupied by the placeholder could be shared amongst the portlets in a number of ways, including but not limited to stacking portlets on top of one another (not shown). In another embodiment, a template can be implemented as a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) table and created with conventional HTML editors. Each cell in a such a table can represent a placeholder. Placeholders can be assigned identifiers during design of the template that are dynamically bound to portlet GUI's during portal page rendering.

FIG. 2 is diagram of portal page customization in accordance to one embodiment of the invention. In one embodiment, customization of a portal page involves the placement of portal elements on a template. In one embodiment, a template is afforded an arbitrary number of levels of customization. In another embodiment, a template can have three levels of customization: global, group and user. An initial template created for a portal page is customized at the global level. This is the default template used for describing the portal page if there are no further customizations. Further customizations at the group level supersede customizations at the global level. Likewise, customizations at the user level take precedence over group and global level customizations.

In FIG. 2, global template 100 is customized to include two portlet GUI's, P1 and P2. In one embodiment, a portal can be associated with more than one user group. Each group can define its own look and feel for a particular portal page. In one embodiment, a user group can be an arbitrary collection of users that is determined statically or dynamically by evaluating rules that take into account information about a user and other information. A global template can be customized to meet the needs of each particular group. For example, Group A template 102 modifies global template 100 such that portlet GUI P2 is repositioned to the upper right-hand corner of the Group A template 102. Group B template 112 customizes global template 100 by deleting portal GUI P2 and adding portal GUI P3. A group template is used for rendering the portal page for all members of the group, unless a group member has further customized it. For example, Group A member User X has repositioned portlet GUI P1 to the lower left-hand corner of user template 104. User Y has customized Group A template 102 with user template 108. User template 108 removes portlet P2, but leaves portlet P1 in the same position as it was in group template 102.

In another embodiment, template customization can be controlled by delegated system administration which both limits and delegates administrative responsibilities for groups and users. For example, customization of a template may involve removing or adding portlets. It may acceptable to endow a group administrator with this flexibility, but not an ordinary user. For this reason, a group administrator may set portlet attributes which prevent a user from adding, removing or moving a given portlet during user customization of a group template. But it also may be desirous to allow a small subset of users to have these capabilities. In this case, a group administrator could delegate some or all of their capabilities to one or more users.

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a system in accordance to one embodiment of the invention. Although this diagram depicts objects as functionally separate, such depiction is merely for illustrative purposes. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the objects portrayed in FIG. 3 can be arbitrarily combined or divided into separate software, firmware or hardware components. Furthermore, it will also be apparent to those skilled in the art that such objects, irregardless of how they are combined or divided, can execute on the same computer or can be arbitrarily distributed among different computers connected by a network. Finally, it is noted that such objects may also be contained within different execution environments (e.g., Java™ Servers, Enterprise Java Bean™ containers, etc.), however these are not depicted for clarity's sake.

A user may be considered anonymous or non-anonymous (e.g., identified specifically via a login procedure). Similarly, an anonymous user may belong to a default group (e.g., “everyone”), whereas a non-anonymous user may belong to one or more non-default groups. Rendering of a portal page begins when client 200 requests a template from portal manager 202. Such a request can contain user and group information. In one embodiment, client 200 can be a web browser. In another embodiment, client 200 can be any system capable of interacting with portal manager 202. In one embodiment, portal manager 202 can be an Enterprise Javabean™ (EJB). The Enterprise Javabeans™ package is available from Sun Microsystems, Inc. In another embodiment, portal manager 202 can be an independent process. In yet a further embodiment, portal manager 202 can part of client 200.

In one embodiment, if a user is non-anonymous, portal manager 202 retrieves the user's template, if any. If there is no user template, portal manager 202 retrieves a group template corresponding to the group. Finally, if there is no group template, portal manager 202 retrieves the default global template for the requested portal page. Similarly, if a user is anonymous, portal manager 202 retrieves a group template, if any, or the default global template. In one embodiment, once a template is retrieved, portal manager 202 binds portlets to placeholders in the template. In one embodiment, this can be accomplished by replacing identifier strings in an HTML table representing the template with directives to initiate portlet execution, such as Java Sever Page™ tag library calls. In one embodiment, templates and any other information needed to represent a portal and its pages can be persisted in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format. In another embodiment, templates and portlets can be persisted in data store 206. Data store 206 can be any media or medium designed to persist data, such as a relational database, an object-oriented database, a flat file, a cache, a buffer, etc.

In another embodiment, as part of binding portlets portal manager 202 checks to see whether the given portal user is entitled to remove, view or edit the portlet in question based on one or more entitlements. An entitlement is a rule that grants or denies access to a resource. In one embodiment, determination of an entitlement consists of dynamically associating roles to a user based on rules that take into account information about the user, information about the user's communication session, or the current state of the system. For example:

• (1) When all of these conditions apply, the user is a GoldMember:
  • Checking account balance>$5,000
  • Combined account balance>$50,000

In rule (1) above, a user is deemed to satisfy the GoldMember role if there is more than $5,000 in their checking account and they have more than $50,000 in their combined accounts. Certain portlets, for example, may only be for GoldMember users. Thus, if only GoldMember users were entitled to execute the portlet in question, it would not be bound to a template for non-GoldMember users. Similarly, if the entitlement was for viewing, rather than execution, the portlet would be bound to the template but only GoldMember users could view it in client 200. If the entitlement was for editing, then the portlet would be bound to the template and would be visible to the user, however only GoldMember users would be allowed to edit the portlet's contents. Entitlements can be evaluated by rules engine 208. In one embodiment, entitlements are persisted in data store 204. After portlet manager 202 has bound portlets to the template, it provides the template to client 200. The portal page is then rendered based on the template.

The foregoing description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to the practitioner skilled in the art. Embodiments were chosen and described in order to best describe the principles of the invention and its practical application, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the invention, the various embodiments and with various modifications that are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the following claims and their equivalents.

Claims

1. A method for describing a portal page, comprising: defining a placeholder on a template;associating at least one portlet with the placeholder, wherein the portlet communicates with other portlets and defines a graphical user interface (GUI) based on the communication with other portlets, wherein the communication between portlets includes data exchange and functional interaction; andmanaging by the portlet of the portlet's GUI, wherein the portlet handles at least one user's input, generates content based upon interaction with the at least one user at the portlet level, and displays a response to the user input in the portlet GUI.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein: the portal page can be described with more than one template.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein: the template can have more than one placeholder.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein: the template is a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) table and the placeholder is a cell in the table.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein: the template can be created and edited in a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editor.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein: the template and the at least one portlet can be persisted in Extensible Markup Language (XML).

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising: associating at least one entitlement with the at least one portlet.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein: the at least one entitlement includes at least one rule to associate a role with a user.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the managing by a portlet further comprises displaying in the portlet GUI user requested information.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein managing by the portlet further comprises accepting selection by the at least one user of a particular portion of the user requested information and responding to the selection by displaying in the portlet GUI detailed information about the particular portion.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the placeholder defines a region of the template in which the at least one portlet can display one of static content or dynamic content.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the placeholder can have more than one portlet.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the user can be one user in a group of users.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the template can be customized for the at least one user or for a group of users.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein customization of the template is performed by the at least one user and includes at least one of adding, removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein: the template affords a plurality of levels of customization, wherein each level of customization the template includes at least one of removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet.

17. A method for describing a portal page, comprising: defining a template, the template having a placeholder;associating at least one portlet with the placeholder, wherein the at least one portlet communicates with other portlets and defines a graphical user interface (GUI) based on the communication with other portlets, wherein the communication between portlets includes data exchange and functional interaction;customizing of the template for at least one of a group and a user, wherein customization of the template is performed by the at least one of the group and the user and includes at least one of adding, removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet; andmanaging by the portlet of the portlet's GUI, wherein the portlet handles at least one user's input, generates content based upon interaction with the at least one user at the portlet level, and displays a response to the user input in the portlet GUI.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein: the portal page can be described with more than one template.

19. The method of claim 17 wherein: the template can have more than one placeholder.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein: the template is a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) table and the placeholder is a cell in the table.

21. The method of claim 17 wherein: the template can be created and edited in a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editor.

22. The method of claim 17 wherein: the template and the at least one portlet can be persisted in Extensible Markup Language (XML).

23. The method of claim 17, further comprising: associating at least one entitlement with the at least one portlet.

24. The method of claim 23 wherein: the at least one entitlement includes at least one rule to associate a role with a user.

25. The method of claim 17 wherein the managing by a portlet further comprises displaying in the portlet GUI user requested information.

26. The method of claim 25 wherein managing by the portlet further comprises accepting selection by the at least one user of a particular portion of the user requested information and responding to the selection by displaying in the portlet GUI detailed information about the particular portion.

27. The method of claim 17 wherein the placeholder defines a region of the template in which the at least one portlet can display one of static content or dynamic content.

28. The method of claim 17 wherein the placeholder can have more than one portlet.

29. The method of claim 17 wherein the user can be one user in a group of users.

30. A method for rendering a portal page, comprising: selectively associating at least one portlet with a placeholder in a customizable template,wherein the association is based on evaluation of at least one entitlement; anddefining a graphical user interface (GUI) by the at least one portlet based on the communication with other portlets, wherein the at least one portlet communicates with other portlets and handles at least one user's input, generates content based upon interaction with the at least one user at the portlet level, and displays a response to the user input in the portlet GUI, wherein the communication between portlets includes data exchange and functional interaction.

31. The method of claim 30 wherein: the portal page can be rendered with more than one template.

32. The method of claim 30 wherein: the template can have more than one placeholder.

33. The method of claim 30 wherein: the template is a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) table and the placeholder is a cell in the table.

34. The method of claim 30 wherein: the template can be created and edited in a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editor.

35. The method of claim 30 wherein: customization of the template is performed by at least one of a group and a user and includes at least one of adding, removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet.

36. The method of claim 30 wherein: the template and the at least one portlet can be persisted in Extensible Markup Language (XML).

37. The method of claim 30 wherein: the at least one entitlement includes at least one rule to associate a role with a user.

38. A system for rendering a portal page, comprising: a portal manager to selectively bind at least one portlet to a template, wherein each portlet defines a graphical user interface (GUI) based on the communication with other portlets,wherein the communication between portlets includes data exchange and functional interaction;a client to accept the bound template from the portal manager;a rules engine coupled to the portal manager to determine which of the at least one portlets are selectively bound; andwherein each portlet can manage the portlet's GUI, and wherein each portlet communicates with other portlets and handles at least one user's input, generates content based upon interaction with the at least one user at the portlet level, and displays a response to the input in the portlet GUI.

39. The system of claim 38 wherein: the portal page can be rendered with more than one template.

40. The system of claim 38, further comprising: a placeholder, wherein the at least one portlet is associated with the placeholder.

41. The system of claim 40 wherein: the template is a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) table and the placeholder is an HTML table cell.

42. The system of claim 38 wherein: the template can be created and edited in a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editor.

43. The system of claim 38 wherein: the template and the at least one portlet definition can be persisted in Extensible Markup Language (XML).

44. The system of claim 38, further comprising: the rules engine evaluates at least one entitlement.

45. The system of claim 44 wherein: the at least one entitlement includes at least one rule to associate a role with a user.

46. The system of claim 38 wherein the at least one portlet displays in the portlet GUI user requested information.

47. The system of claim 46 wherein the at least one portlet accepts selection by the at least one user of a particular portion of the user requested information and responds to the selection by displaying in the portlet GUI detailed information about the particular portion.

48. The system of claim 38 wherein the placeholder defines a region of the template in which the at least one portlet can display one of static content or dynamic content.

49. The system of claim 38 wherein the placeholder can have more than one portlet.

50. The system of claim 38 wherein the user can be one user in a group of users.

51. The system of claim 38 wherein the template can be customized for the user or for a group of users.

52. The method of claim 51 wherein customization of the template is performed by the at least one user and includes at least one of adding, removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet.

53. A method for describing a portal page, comprising: creating a second template for a user group by a group administrator based on a first template which first template has at least one portlet, wherein the at least one portlet communicates with other portlets and handles at least one user's input, generates content based upon interaction with the at least one user at the portlet level, and displays a response to the user input in the at least one portlet GUI, wherein the user group is an arbitrary collection of users that is determined statically or dynamically by evaluating rules that take into account information about a user and other information, wherein the communication between portlets includes data exchange and functional interaction;customizing the second template to include at least one of removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet; andcreating a third template based on the second template and customizing the third template to include at least one of removing, repositioning, editing and configuring the at least one portlet of the second template.

54. The method of claim 53 wherein: the first template has at least one placeholder; andwherein the second template has at least one placeholder.

55. The method of claim 53 wherein: at least one of the first template and the second template is a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) table.

56. The method of claim 53 wherein: at least one of the first template and the second template can be created and edited in a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) editor.

57. The method of claim 53 wherein: the first template and the second template can be persisted in Extensible Markup Language (XML).

58. The method of claim 53, further comprising: associating at least one entitlement with at least one portlet.

59. The method of claim 58 wherein: the at least one entitlement includes at least one rule to associate a role with a user.

60. The method of claim 53 wherein the at least one portlet displays in the portlet GUI user requested information.

61. The method of claim 60 wherein the at least one portlet accepts selection by the at least one user of a particular portion of the user requested information and responds to the selection by displaying in the portlet GUI detailed information about the particular portion.

62. The method of claim 53 wherein the at least one portlet can display one of static content or dynamic content.

63. The method of claim 53 wherein the placeholder can have more than one portlet.

64. The method of claim 53 wherein the user can be one user in a group of users.

65. The method of claim 53 wherein the first template can be a global template or a group template.

66. The method of 53, wherein the customized template for a user group is created by a one or more users delegated by the group administrator.

67. The method of 53, wherein the user group has only one user.

68. A machine readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by a processor cause a system to: define a placeholder on a template;associate at least one portlet with the placeholder, wherein the portlet communicates with other portlets and defines a graphical user interface (GUI) based on the communication with other portlets, wherein the communication between portlets includes data exchange and functional interaction; andwherein the at least one portlet can manage the portlet's GUI, and wherein the portlet handles at least one user's input, generates content based upon interaction with the at least one user at the portlet level, and displays a response to the input in the portlet GUI.